


Roped Out

by yeaka



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:31:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2715653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeaka/pseuds/yeaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The captain meets the watchman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roped Out

**Author's Note:**

> Slash version is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2716181)
> 
> A/N: The captain of Stefan’s guards doesn’t seem to have a name, but I think the actor’s name is John, so I’m using that. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own Maleficent or any of its contents, and I’m not making any money off this.

He walks when he wants to run, because he is the captain and he has an example to set. He doesn’t want to give away his traitorous excitement and doesn’t want it to be misread as fear. He walks down the spiraled, stone steps to the dungeon, as calmly as though they’ve got a local village boy for pick pocketing. Instead, he’s been told, they caught a _faerie._

John hasn’t seen a faerie in _years_. Just those three little squeaky women at the princess’ ceremony, and of course, the great witch that followed. He doesn’t see how any of them could’ve been captured though; his men are good, but they aren’t _that_ good, and can’t faeries fly away? Aren’t they smart enough to never leave their Moors? When he reaches the bottom, he half expects to find the drab walls alight with glimmering stars and roses and all the magic King Stefan’s sucked out of the world, but of course, it’s just as dark as ever. 

His guards are standing in a tight ring in the corner, talking amongst themselves, some jeering and others muttering nervously. They stop the minute they see him coming out the corners of their helmets; there is _some_ advantage to being captain. The loudest of them all, a graying old man who’s prodding the prisoner’s face, only shuts up when John glares at him. Whatever the king might want, John treats his prisoners well. There’s enough needless cruelty in their land without the military perpetuating it. As the guards step out of the way for him to look, the man in their center glances up at him and _stares_ , black eyes boring right through his chest. John almost steps back under the piercing gaze, makes his mind up in a split second, and snaps, “Leave us.”

“But,” the guard on his right, a new recruit with cropped red hair splutters, “sir, he’s one of them faerie folk—just look at the marks on his face.”

“And his chest,” another points out, grabbing at the prisoner’s collar and ripping it open to expose a milk-white throat and intricate carvings along the lines of his neck. John takes a second to take in the proof, then shoves the guard holding the prisoner’s shirt open, forcing his hand to drop. The prisoner gives the guard a sick, disgruntled look, and John points towards the stairs. 

“All of you, out.” At the dismayed and begrudging looks, he steels his tone and barks again, “I will question the prisoner alone; leave us!”

One by one, the guards begin to shuffle away, their armour clattering in their unimpressed bumbling. Clearly, they expected a show, a public persecution, but John isn’t King Stefan and isn’t about to give them one. Strangers in their land aren’t figures for vile amusement. He watches the last of them go and waves off the token one standing at the bottom with an upheld spear—none of the cells are filled and there’s no need for the regular watch. The only prisoner here is tied with rope around one of the stone columns that connects to the low ceiling, like they wanted to hold him upright under their stares and couldn’t wait all the way into a cell. The man is now staring intently at John, a level, serious thing mostly wary and a little confused. 

When all the footsteps have fade into the distance, John has a moment to properly look at the prisoner, awash in the low flicker of the fire-lit sconces. He’s incredibly pale, almost deathly so, but his hair and his eyes and his clothes are jet-black, giving him a striking contrast. His eyes are big and round, his noise pointed like a beak, his cheeks decorated with little crosshatched marks. The more John stares into those eyes, the more he’s sure he’s seen them before. The familiarity, the primal instinct that he knows exactly who, what this is, twists in his chest.

The prisoner breaks the silence first, bristling and insisting in a proud, lilting voice, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Unable to contest that, John asks, “What’s your name, faerie?” Though he’s not sure it’s the right term. 

The man tells him, “My name is Diaval, and I am _not_ a faerie.” He says it with a slight huff, both like it should exonerate him on the spot and like it’s an unredeemable mistake. 

John finds himself nodding and saying, “I apologize for the offense.” But it does lend to his suspicion. The man—Diaval—makes a slight movement with his head that makes his hair ruffle like feathers, his arms flexing in their bonds. He has no use of them, tied like this, and John takes a quick double check that his men didn’t tie the poor man too tightly around the middle. Diaval makes another twitching movement, and John is sure, then, that he’s seen this mannerism before. He’s seen those eyes before. Not a faerie, but something from the Moors, clearly, with a pointed nose and dark colouring and a prideful countenance. It seems an absurd thing to add up, but something in him is almost _positive_ that he has the right of it.

“I would like to be untied now,” Diaval says bluntly.

John takes a shot at it: “Would you prefer a bird cage?”

Diaval’s eyes go wide. His pink lips part just slightly, and John knows he’s hit the nail on the head. He thought it’d been a while since he saw the lone raven that often comes to visit, perching just outside his window and seeming to read all his plans, always there to listen in whenever there’s vital news. He’s only been to the wall a few times himself, but once, late at night, when the sky was dark and he couldn’t be _sure_ , he thought he saw a bird become a man, off between the thorns in a puff of black smoke. But stranger things can be seen in the Moors, and he’d brushed it off as another lie of magic.

But now there’s a beautiful man tied up in his dungeon, and he can only shake his head in wonderment and say, “It’s safe to talk here.”

“Safe?” Diaval repeats numbly. Now he looks almost frightened, which John regrets, though John hasn’t meant any of this to be threatening. “That’s easy for you to say, when we’re in your kingdom with me tied up and you in armour.”

“Fair,” John concedes, “but I also could’ve had an army about me, and I chose not to. Why do you think I’ve gotten you alone?”

To his surprise, Diaval rolls his eyes lies and mutters, “If I understood why you humans do the things you do, I wouldn’t need to be here in the first place.”

“And why are you here, without your wings? Why are you always here?” A question he’s wondered many times, though he’s afraid he knows the answer.

And he’s even more worried over what it makes him think, what it means for him. It wouldn’t have mattered, before; there’s no way to discuss things with a raven. But now that he has this opportunity...

John’s spent his life watching a beautiful, prosperous kingdom waver and struggle below a mad king, and he’d be a fool not to take this chance. The least he can do is learn more about what they’re fighting—a real threat? Or a saner, kinder ruler than theirs? Diaval is looking at him curiously, as though still unable to fathom how he came to recognize the bird in the man. Maybe mortals all seem like fools to creatures from the Moors. It takes Diaval a minute to say, “I was keeping an eye on you.” Then he pauses, tilts his head again and corrects, looking elsewhere, “Well, not _you,_ you. The kingdom, you.”

“And that’s all?” Although, if it were more, John’s not sure what he would do. If it’s weaving some evil spell, he’d have to protect the citizens, of course, but if all the witch really wants is to stop Stefan, alone, well...

Diaval, looking confused, asks, “What else could I do?” 

Apparently not magic. “Can’t you just become a bird and squeeze out of the ropes?”

Diaval answers, “It’s not my magic,” like that’s plain as day. Maybe everything really is that one witch, then. It’s a pity. As beautiful as Diaval’s human form is, in doesn’t seem fair to keep him trapped in a different shell without the ability to change back and fly away. Assuming he was a raven first, of course. There’s a lot left for John to ask. 

But he’s not sure what he wants to ask, not yet. It’s a big thing he’s contemplating, a huge betrayal. As he thinks, he moves around the column, Diaval’s eyes following him sharply, and he begins to work on the clumsy mass of knots his guards left the ropes in. He will have to think about this, weigh out the possibilities and, if it’s possible, learn more about the other side. A part of him wants to meet the witch, as terrifying as the prospect is, and hear from her own lips what she really wants. As he picks apart the ties, he muses, though this would make it impossible for them to talk, “If you come back, best do it with your wings.”

“Will I be set free to come back?” Diaval’s looking around the pole at him, and John nods. Diaval doesn’t look scared anymore. As John loosens the bonds, Diaval starts to struggle out of them, until the ropes are no more than a pool along the floor. He steps out to flex his fingers and shake his wrists like having his arms useless was worse than the capture itself. John will have to remember that. He waits for Diaval to look up at him, frowning. They share a look, perhaps an understanding, and Diaval says, “Thank you.”

“Come.” John sweeps past him towards the back door, currently bolted shut; it doesn’t do to stare. He can hear Diaval’s footsteps following after a pause. “I’ll walk you to the gate.”

To Diaval’s credit, he doesn’t ask why. If he’s gathered anything from his spying, there must be some reluctance to the king’s wishes in there. John knows he’s not the only one who’s sick of fighting a one-sided war. It doesn’t hurt to build a bridge with one man. Maybe he can build on it, maybe Diaval will come back, maybe he could even earn Diaval’s trust. The light outside the wooden door is fading, but torches line the sides of the castle already, lit like those inside. They pass another two guards who nod at John, and he holds back a step to level with Diaval so he can splay a hand against Diaval’s back and keep him walking. On first glance, Diaval is just a man, but it won’t take long for word to spread that they’ve got a foreign prisoner, and questions will only slow them down. 

A quick weave through the courtyard, and John takes Diaval to the lesser-used opening, the one for supplies and late night excursions that only certain officials have the keys to. The guards on either side of it say nothing as John slips his key into the rusted iron lock, then drags the door open wide. The rocky hill doesn’t go far before it slopes around the mountain, but he has no doubts that Diaval can manage it. He stops there, feet still on the cobblestones of the castle perimeter, and Diaval takes a step out onto the grass, then turns and peers at him. John nods, and after a minute, Diaval does, too. Yes, an understanding. One good deed in the middle of a battle.

Diaval walks off into the night, coat swaying in the breeze like wings.


End file.
